Well, the last solar max was one helluva max (double-peaked, in fact), so perhaps this solar min will be of equal magnitude. Happy news is that aircraft & maritime navigation systems--specifically, GPS & LORAN-C, to say nothing of HF radio comms-- are lovin' it!

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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.

There were many days of no sunspots in Nov. & Dec. especially; minimum is such a drag. Spaceweather.com formerly kept track of how many days without 'spots...and then quit giving notice because it'd been so long. That web site gives daily 'spot count, even if it's zero.

But now we're "over the hump" and Cycle #24 has begun (as per other thread in this folder).

Hofi, I think the updated image you should link is this one, really showing hints of the new solar cycle:http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gifIndeed, it seems we are returning to less strong activity pattern we had about 1 century ago...

Dilo, maybe the astronomers of today can see more of the smaller spots than those of 100+ years ago?I know the Wikipedia chart is based on the area covered, not the number of spots, but surely therewere a lot more unobserved spots back then, and this must account for some of that (until-recently)steady increase.

Indeed, the Sun experienced a special period, but it allowed NASA researchers to show a timely link between the Sun and the climate of Earth's thermosphere, the region above 100 km (roughly 60 miles), an essential step in making accurate predictions of climate change in the high atmosphere. Dramatic cooling in Earth’s upper atmosphere correlates with the declining phase of the current solar cycle. Results obtained through TIMED mission.(Thermosphere-Ionosphere-Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics)Meanwhile, Sunspot 1040 is a sprawling sunspot group.http://solarcycle24.com/index2.htmhttp://www.n3kl.org/sun/index.html

I know that this might be considered thread necromancy, but this article is interesting.

QUOTE

Eerily Blank Sun

Something unexpected is happening on the Sun. 2013 was supposed to be the year of "solar maximum," the peak of the 11-year sunspot cycle. Yet 2013 has arrived and solar activity is relatively low. Sunspot numbers are well below their values from 2011, and strong solar flares have been infrequent.

The image above shows the Earth-facing surface of the Sun on February 28, 2013, as observed by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. HMI observes the solar disk at 6173 Ångstroms, a wavelength designed to study surface oscillations and the magnetic field. HMI observed just a few small sunspots on an otherwise clean face, which is usually riddled with many spots during peak solar activity.

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